A paper touted as “the first systematic review and meta-analysis” of research on the effects of homeopathy for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been retracted more than a year after critics first contacted the journal with concerns.
The article, “Is homeopathy effective for attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder? A meta-analysis,” appeared in Pediatric Research, a Springer Nature title, last June. It has not been cited in the scientific literature, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, but Altmetric, which quantifies the online attention papers receive, ranks the paper in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked.
The original paper concluded:
Individualized homeopathy showed a clinically relevant and statistically robust effect in the treatment of ADHD.
However, the retraction notice, dated September 20, detailed four “concerns regarding the analysis of the articles included in the meta-analysis,” and concluded:
Based on the above deficiencies following thorough review, the Editor-in-Chief has substantial concerns regarding the validity of the results presented in this article.
Corresponding author Michael Teut of Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany told us:
Homeopathy is a very controversial subject, so critics have looked closely at the work. Unfortunately, a transcription error was made in the data extraction, which is relevant to the overall result. From this, one can justify a retraction of the work. Ultimately, it is good that the error was made transparent; the scientific community worked here. However, we authors would have preferred a correction in the form of an amendment, which we asked the journal to publish. Three further points of criticism are, in our view, contentious and less relevant. The journal communicated professionally.
The last author, Harald Walach, lost two papers – as well as a university affiliation – in 2021. One paper, which claimed that children’s masks trap too much carbon dioxide, was republished in another journal after its retraction from JAMA Pediatrics. The other claimed that COVID-19 vaccines caused two deaths for every three deaths they prevented.
Teut and Walach both agreed with the retraction, according to the notice, but the first author did not.
Soon after the meta-analysis of homeopathy for ADHD was published, Edzard Ernst, a retired researcher who won the 2015 John Maddox Prize “for his long commitment to applying scientific methodologies in research into complementary and alternative medicines,” published a critique of the article on his blog.
Ernst and two collaborators also sent a letter to the journal in which they wrote:
We conclude that the positive result obtained by the authors is due to a combination of the inclusion of biased trials unsuitable to build evidence together with some major misreporting of study outcomes.
In June of this year, the journal informed Ernst and his co-authors that it would not publish their critique, “because the priority given to it was not sufficient to justify publication,” according to their blog post about the matter. In their reply, also included in the post, they called for the journal to retract the paper, and wrote:
In our comment we point out that the authors made a lot of errors – to say it mildly. They deny the doubtful quality of the studies they included in their meta-analysis, they did not stick to their own exclusion criteria, the data the authors report do not resemble the findings of the studies they were allegedly taken from, the one study setting the results is a mere pilot study.
The reason you give for our letter not being published is that it was not given enough priority to justify publication. We would like to know: Which issues can conceivably receive higher priority than the fact that a paper in your journal is downright wrong and misleading?
Ernst told us:
I do support the retraction but feel that it could have come quicker. I also think that the retraction notice of the journal might have made it clearer how the authors responded. Lastly, I would have hoped that the journal apologizes for the evidently negligent peer review of this paper.
We asked Springer Nature why the issues called out in the retraction notice were not identified during peer review, but a spokesperson declined to comment on that question for “confidentiality reasons.” The spokesperson said:
We commenced an internal investigation, with the support of the Springer Nature Research Integrity Group, after concerns were raised by several readers about the published paper. This investigation identified substantial concerns regarding the validity of the results presented in the article and once we had completed our investigation and considered all options, we concluded that retracting the paper was the appropriate course of action to take. Full details of the reasons for this retraction can be found in the retraction notice.
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*homeopathy*
The journal should have desk rejected the submission for the subject alone. There is no possible mechanism of action other than mysticism. Contrary to Dr. Teut, homeopathy is not “controversial,” it is complete nonsense. There is another nice summary by Stuart Ritchie about the issues with this paper here: https://www.sciencefictions.org/p/meta-homeopathy (with occasional f-bombs).
Stuart Richie makes no valid objection to the data. Sorry.
This is just an example of anti-homeopathy bias and caving to political pressure. It has nothing to do with science. It is common knowledge that Ernst is a well known anti-homeopathy activist. If other articles were given this kind of scrutiny, virtually nothing would ever get published.
“It has nothing to do with science.”
Yes, you’re correct, homeopathy has nothing to do with science.
Homeopathy isn’t real. It can’t work. It’s a fantasy. No legitimate scientific journal should ever publish papers on homeopathy (other than ones which show that it’s bullshit).
On top of that, the absurdity of homeopathy is not the reason for the retraction. It was retracted for a clear error that impacted the interpretation of the results. In other words, the paper was retracted for sound scientific reasons:
“Corresponding author Michael Teut of Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin in Germany told us:
Homeopathy is a very controversial subject, so critics have looked closely at the work. Unfortunately, a transcription error was made in the data extraction, which is relevant to the overall result. From this, one can justify a retraction of the work.”
1) Bias is not the correct word. There are sound scientific reasons to conclude that homeopathy hypotheses are absurd and unfounded.
2) Science papers should be given far more scrutiny than they are. If they were given sufficient scrutiny sites like Retraction Watch, PubPeer, and For Better Science would not need to exist.
bi·as
/ˈbīəs/
noun
noun: bias; plural noun: biases
1.
prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
prej·u·dice
/ˈprejədəs/
noun
noun: prejudice; plural noun: prejudices
1.
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
Agreed, homeopathy has nothing to do with science. Hence, there should not be homeopathy papers in science journals.
It is common knowledge that Ernst is a well known anti-homeopathy activist.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he has also criticised voodoo.
Smut, I think you are repeating yourself. What is the epistemic difference between homeopathy and voodoo? (Beyond no-one offering mangled quantum non-explanations for voodoo).
What you are trying to call bias is actually objective scientific proof. It’s now known with certainty that homeopathy doesn’t work, it’s not a controversy. As for Ernst, he designed sound (and replicable) highest quality medical trials that show this beyond doubt. It’s not his opinion, bias, or activism, it’s an objective fact, unlike your post above. And he lost his job for it, while doing real science and saying the objective truth, which was inconvenient to the pro-homeopathy actually biased people in power. While you get to keep yours and spread lies. Do you sleep well at night?
In reality, most of Ernst’s papers are systematic reviews of low methodological quality, a few meta-analyses and reanalyses, and mostly editorials or letters to the editor. Ironically, when Ernst publishes articles jointly with authors he tends to have more favorable conclusions towards homeopathy, but when he publishes as a single author he tends to be more negative. Robert Hahn, a reputable doctor and anesthesiologist, demonstrated that Ernst’s reanalyses are biased and flawed. A. Vickers in a brief analysis showed that many of Ernst’s papers suffer from copy and paste. It is surprising that many of Ernst’s papers have not yet been retracted.
That’s right, Ernst maintains an aggressive agenda against homeopathy studies published in reputable biomedical journals. Virtually, many of the retractions documented even in Retraction Watch, are due to nonsense such as the editor “doesn’t like the data and since it is homeopathy it must be retracted because it is superstition or pseudoscience.” Of all the retractions in studies, only in one is there a slight suggestion of fraud because its authors (from India) did not have certain documents or were illegally practicing medicine. The rest of the retracted papers have no indication of fraud or manipulation. This is a huge scandal and undermines the credibility of the “scientific establishment” that allows itself to be pressured by non-scientific groups such as the Committee for Skeptical Research and its derivatives in Germany.
Null, author of the paper in this thread has admitted that the paper is problematic and agreed to retract it. Your unsupported blanket statements are not helping your cause in this case. (Though they are understandable, when the facts are not on your side, you have to either change your mind or close your eyes for them. You’ve chosen the latter)
Regarding your off-topic statement about homeopathy not being “allowed” in medical journals, well it shouldn’t be, for the simple reason that it’s not medicine – it doesn’t even identify as medicine itself so there’s no scandal.
What you comment does not make sense. It is not “the author”, but 2 of the 3 authors accepted to retract the article since the editors did not want to accept to publish a correction. And anyway, one of the authors mentions that the rest of the criticisms are irrelevant.
What you propose is censorship, you don’t give any argument in between, but take the sectarian attitude of closing your eyes to evidence that contradicts your world view. The fact that coincidentally no article by detractors of homeopathy has been retracted from journals, despite the fact that many of them have errors and inconsistencies or are very questionable methodologically (such as those of Ernst), does it not tell you that something is not right?
I can write a “scientific” article criticizing homeopathy and placing about ten references (cherry picking), exaggerate and make it an almost identical copy of the Wikipedia article. Then, send it to a magazine with biased editors against homeopathy, and brag about it in my networks to reach thousands of visits and downloads in a couple of days. Or I can be honest and look for the references for or against, correct, revise and admit the inherent limitations, and pray that an orthodox journal will accept it for publication. But of course, the second option does not bring fame or money, better to dedicate oneself to retract every article against homeopathy in the name of “scientific purism”!
Yet another instance of fractional amplitudes being dismissed as an “unknown source of variation”. Curiously there are no mainstream objections to fractional amplitudes in quantum computing. Computers are allowed to tread where biological systems do not dare.
This whole process of evaluations was totally idiotic and irrelevant, misleading and dangerous.
Journals should clearly state on their websites that “Articles about any forms of pseudoscience will not be considered for publication”, and outright-reject any articles with traces of pseudoscience like acupuncture, homeopathy, or any other pseudoscience *WITHOUT even looking at their content*.
The fact that most editors don’t even know this, and still EVALUATE, send for peer review, or even publish pseudoscience in guise of scientific nomenclature shows that something is seriously wrong with the science system and journal editors.
* Currently, all Frontiers journals say such a statement on their websites, which is very good. All journals should do this.